Insult to injury: DeSclafani leaves with toenail issue, then Giants lose lead

PHOENIX -- Four weeks ago, Anthony DeSclafani was playing piano with his 2-year-old son, Cru, when he suffered a freak injury that ultimately led to his early exit in the sixth inning of the Giants’ 7-2 loss to the D-backs on Saturday night at Chase Field.

“It’s silly, but I was playing piano with my kid and tried to help him off the bench and the thing literally squared my [left] toe up several weeks ago,” DeSclafani said. “The toenail kind of finally just died and started affecting me today.”

DeSclafani hadn’t been bothered by the injury in his previous starts, but he said the nail took a turn for the worse in the last week and began causing him discomfort as it became progressively looser during his outing against the D-backs.

The 33-year-old veteran still managed to grind through the pain and open his outing with five scoreless innings, but he ran into trouble in the sixth and ultimately departed with the bases loaded and no outs.

DeSclafani exited after throwing 77 pitches and handed a one-run lead to reliever Scott Alexander, who allowed the tying run to score on a wild pitch and then surrendered a two-out, bases-clearing triple to Dominic Fletcher that put the D-backs ahead, 4-1.

“If the toenail wasn’t an issue, I think I could have obviously kept going and hopefully still did my job and try to throw up zeros,” said DeSclafani, who was charged with three runs on five hits over five-plus innings. “It just got to the point where it was just affecting me. I was losing command and velo and stuff like that. More frustrating than anything.”

Arizona broke the game open with a three-run eighth that was capped by Fletcher’s two-run shot off Tristan Beck, giving the rookie D-backs outfielder 11 RBIs over the first three games of this four-game series.

The Giants, meanwhile, couldn’t get much going against ace right-hander Zac Gallen, who gave up only two runs on five hits over 7 2/3 innings.

“I thought we had some pretty good at-bats,” manager Gabe Kapler said. “Just off the barrel, some deep fly balls, some near misses. At times we were pretty aggressive and put the ball in play quickly and he had some short innings. But we were able to grind him in other innings. Overall, I thought our at-bat quality was solid. Just to scratch across a couple of runs against Zac Gallen is a challenge. He’s having one of the better years of his career, and he’s already one of the top pitchers in baseball.”

DeSclafani made only five starts for the Giants last year before undergoing season-ending surgery on his right ankle in July, but he showed he was past the issue by logging a 2.80 ERA through his first seven outings of 2023.

Even with his nail “hanging by a thread,” DeSclafani remained effective for most of the night, though he appeared to aggravate his toe when he went to cover first base on Alek Thomas’ inning-ending groundout in the fifth.

DeSclafani also looked uncomfortable while attempting to field Ketel Marte’s tapper down the third-base line in the sixth, prompting head athletic trainer Dave Groeschner and Kapler to emerge from the dugout for a mound visit. After a brief discussion, DeSclafani ended up walking off the field with Groeschner.

“He was able to continue pitching and felt good enough to keep rolling, but we had an eye on him as that nail was coming off and causing him quite a bit of pain,” Kapler said. ‘We monitored and monitored and then finally went out there with Groesch and decided it was probably good to pull the plug on him.”

Kapler said he’s optimistic DeSclafani will be able to make his next scheduled start, though the Giants will have a better sense of his status once the nail comes off. In the meantime, DeSclafani plans to stay away from tickling the ivories.

“It’s not my piano,” DeSclafani said. “I rented a house, and it literally came unfurnished except for a piano. It was just sitting in the house I rented. Not a fan of pianos. I wanted to learn, now I don’t.”